{"title":"Measuring the Value of Communication","authors":"P. Argenti","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.880782","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.880782","url":null,"abstract":"In the past several years, determining the effectiveness of communications activities has become increasingly important both to communications professionals and to the greater business community. In 2004, the Communications Executive Council (CEC) conducted a survey of hundreds of chief communication officers in major corporations; 79 percent of the respondents stated they believed communication performance measurement was more important than it had been three years earlier. Survey respondents also ranked Measuring and Communicating Effectiveness of the Function as the second most important issue facing the communications industry. Not everyone in the communications industry views measurement in the same light, though. While some embrace the science of measurement as it relates to communications, others look at communications as an art outside the realm of formal measurement. Quotations from two corporate communications professionals illustrate this dichotomy: You can't manage what you can't measure. Everyone's looking for a seat at the table, and they ought to be looking at measurement for getting to the table and staying there. Bill Margaritis, SVP Worldwide Communications and IR, Fed Ex I cringe at the idea of return on investment because that sounds like what we do ought to be so predictable when it's not. Bill Nielsen, former Corporate VP of Public Affairs, Johnson & Johnson Despite the naysayers, however, most communications professionals are increasingly recognizing the truth in Margartis' words; without data on the effectiveness of their activities, communications professionals cannot gain the credibility they desire from senior management. In this article, we examine the importance of measurement to the communications industry, the insufficiency of measurement in communications, how communications professionals' measurement needs are changing, obstacles to meeting measurement needs, and the potential benefits from understanding the link between communications and business value, and, a new possible solution. This discussion is essential to understanding that the communications industry needs a way to add meaning to the data it already has; to link existing data to business outcomes; and to demonstrate that effective communications activities move organizations toward their business objectives. In many cases, companies do not require more or better measurement, only better use of existing measurement data. And once the communications industry has the ability to understand how its activities affect business outcomes, communications professionals can have a greater effect on business outcomes going forward rather than simply justifying what they have done in the past. To that end, we also discuss what we believe are the keys to measuring the contribution of communications activities.","PeriodicalId":172039,"journal":{"name":"Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth Research Paper Series","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2005-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131510118","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Information Acquisition and Mutual Funds","authors":"Diego García, Joel M. Vanden","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.488885","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.488885","url":null,"abstract":"We study the formation of mutual funds by generalizing the standard competitive noisy rational expectations framework. In our model, informed agents set up mutual funds as a means of selling their private information to uninformed agents. We study the case of imperfect competition among fund managers, where uninformed agents invest simultaneously in multiple mutual funds. The size of the assets under management in the mutual fund industry is determined by endogenizing the agents' information acquisition decisions. Our model yields novel predictions on the informativeness of price, the optimal fees of mutual funds, and the equilibrium risk premium. In particular, we show that a sufficiently competitive mutual fund sector yields more informative prices and a lower equity risk premium.","PeriodicalId":172039,"journal":{"name":"Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth Research Paper Series","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2005-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132800819","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Importers, Exporters and Multinationals: A Portrait of Firms in the U.S. That Trade Goods","authors":"A. Bernard, J. Jensen, Peter K. Schott","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.729188","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.729188","url":null,"abstract":"This paper provides an integrated view of globally engaged U.S. firms by exploring a newly developed dataset that links U.S. international trade transactions to longitudinal data on U.S. enterprises. These data permit examination of a number of new dimensions of firm activity, including how many products firms trade, how many countries firms trade with, the characteristics of those countries, the concentration of trade across firms, whether firms transact at arms length or with related parties, and whether firms import as well as export. Firms that trade goods play an important role in the U.S., employing more than a third of the U.S. workforce. We find that the most globally engaged U.S. firms, i.e. those that both export to and import from related parties, dominate U.S. trade flows and employment at trading firms. We also find that firms that begin trading between 1993 and 2000 experience especially rapid employment growth and are a major force in overall job creation.","PeriodicalId":172039,"journal":{"name":"Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth Research Paper Series","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2005-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127713882","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Noise and Aggregation of Information in Large Markets","authors":"Diego García, B. Urosevic","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.437402","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.437402","url":null,"abstract":"We study the relation between noise (liquidity traders, endowment shocks) and the aggregation of information in financial markets with large number of agents. We show that as long as noise increases with the number of agents, the limiting equilibrium is well-defined and leads to non-trivial information acquisition, even when per-capita noise tends to zero. In such equilibrium risk sharing and price revelation play different roles than in the standard limiting economy in which per-capita noise is finite. We apply our model to study information sales by a monopolist, and information acquisition in multi-asset markets, showing that it leads to qualitatively different results with respect to those in the existing literature. Our conditions on noise are shown to be necessary and sufficient to have limiting economies with perfectly competitive behavior consistent with endogenous information acquisition.","PeriodicalId":172039,"journal":{"name":"Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth Research Paper Series","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2005-02-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124936589","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Who Enters, Where, and Why? The Influence of Capabilities and Initial Resource Endowments on the Location Choices of New Enterprises","authors":"Aviad Pe'er, I. Vertinsky","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.861184","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.861184","url":null,"abstract":"Using data about all de novo entrants into Canadian manufacturing sectors during 1984-1998, we studied location choices as a function of firms' initial resources and capabilities. Employing nested logit estimation, we examined the impact of various location traits such as: agglomeration, competition, deterrence, and sunk costs, on location choices. Findings reveal that stronger entrants value more locations with positive cluster externalities, but are more detracted by local competition and incumbents' deterrence strategies. Weaker firms are attracted to places with lower entry barriers and sunk costs. The findings imply the existence of both favorable and adverse entry selection processes which are dominant at different phases of the evolution of a cluster","PeriodicalId":172039,"journal":{"name":"Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth Research Paper Series","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2005-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133247236","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Foreign Owners and Plant Survival","authors":"A. Bernard, Fredrik Sjoholm","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.455280","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.455280","url":null,"abstract":"In recent years, international capital flows of all types have increased dramatically and most governments have been actively encouraging inflows of direct investment. However, concerns remain that reliance on foreign multinationals may be a risky development strategy as foreign firms are likely to be less rooted in the local economy and may be quicker to close down production. This paper asks whether foreign owners are more likely to close plants than domestic owners. In Indonesia, plants with any foreign ownership are far less likely to close than wholly-owned domestic plants. However, the lower probability of shutdown is a result of the larger size of foreign plants rather than their nationality of ownership. Controlling for plant size and productivity, we find that foreign plants are significantly more likely to close than comparable domestic establishments.","PeriodicalId":172039,"journal":{"name":"Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth Research Paper Series","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127233129","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Static and Dynamic Pricing of Excess Capacity in a Make-to-Order Environment","authors":"Joseph M. Hall, P. Kopalle, David F. Pyke","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.485702","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.485702","url":null,"abstract":"Recent years have seen advances in research and management practice in the area of pricing, and particularly in dynamic pricing and revenue management. At the same time, researchers and managers have made dramatic improvements in production and supply chain management. The interactions between pricing and production/supply chain performance, however, are not as well understood. Can a firm benefit from knowing the status of the supply chain or production facility when making pricing decisions? How much can be gained if pricing decisions explicitly and optimally account for this status? This paper addresses these questions by examining a make-to-order manufacturer that serves two customer classes - core customers who pay a fixed negotiated price and are guaranteed job acceptance, and \"fill-in\" customers who make job submittal decisions based on the instantaneous price set by the firm for such orders. We examine four pricing policies that span a range of complexity and required knowledge about the status of the production system at the manufacturer, including the optimal policy of setting a different price for each possible state of the queue. We demonstrate properties of the optimal policy, and we illustrate numerically the financial gains a firm can achieve by following this policy vs. simpler pricing policies. The four policies we consider are (1) state-independent (static) pricing, (2) allowing fill-in orders only when the system is idle, (3) setting a uniform price up to a cut-off state, and (4) general state-dependent pricing. Although general state-dependent pricing is optimal in this setting, we find that charging a uniform price up to a cut-off state performs quite well in many settings and presents an attractive trade-off between ease of implementation and profitability. Thus, a fairly simple heuristic policy may actually out-perform the optimal policy when costs of design and implementation are taken into account.","PeriodicalId":172039,"journal":{"name":"Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth Research Paper Series","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128076047","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Predicting Competitive Response to P&G's Value Pricing Move: Combining Normative and Empirical Analyses","authors":"Kusum L. Ailawadi, P. Kopalle, S. Neslin","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.385223","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.385223","url":null,"abstract":"This research uses P&G's value pricing initiative as a context for testing the ability of a normative economic model to predict competitor and retailer response. We first estimate the response parameters of a demand function for each brand from the period before value pricing was initiated. We then formulate a dynamic Manufacturer-Stackelberg game theoretic model that includes P&G, a national brand competitor, and a retailer. The model takes P&G's move as given and prescribes the actions that competitors and the retailer should take with respect to price and promotion. We test the predictive power of the normative model by substituting the estimated response parameters into the model to obtain prescriptions for each competitor and the retailer, and then seeing whether these prescriptions are related to the actual moves taken by competitors and the retailer. We find that our economic model, coupled with empirical estimates of its response parameters, has significant predictive power. It is more accurate for competitive response than for retailer response, but the predictive power is statistically significant in both cases. Covariates such as category advertising, category purchase cycle, and multi-market contact also predict competitive response, but our economic model-based prescription is the most important predictor. Overall, the results suggest that competitor and retailer response to a significant policy change by a major \"player\" is predictable and at least partially rational in its dependence on response parameters processed through a dynamic game theoretic model.","PeriodicalId":172039,"journal":{"name":"Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth Research Paper Series","volume":"54 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-11-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115804738","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Survival of the Best Fit: Competition from Low Wage Countries and the (Uneven) Growth of Us Manufacturing Plants","authors":"A. Bernard, J. Jensen, Peter K. Schott","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.324204","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.324204","url":null,"abstract":"We examine the relationship between import competition from low wage countries and the reallocation of US manufacturing from 1977 to 1997. Both employment and output growth are slower for plants that face higher levels of low wage import competition in their industry. As a result, US manufacturing is reallocated over time towards industries that are more capital and skill intensive. Differential growth is driven by a combination of increased plant failure rates and slower growth of surviving plants. Within industries, low wage import competition has the strongest effects on the least capital and skill intensive plants. Surviving plants that switch industries move into more capital and skill intensive sectors when they face low wage competition.","PeriodicalId":172039,"journal":{"name":"Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth Research Paper Series","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-08-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129779537","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Trends and Transitions in the Long Run Growth of Nations","authors":"A. Bernard","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.275970","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.275970","url":null,"abstract":"Empirical work on cross-country growth has focussed almost exclusively on the speed of convergence to steady state and the variations in steady state levels. This paper examines the estimated long-run growth rate, i.e. the rate of steady state growth, in a Solow growth model. All estimates of common world steady state growth are shown to be zero or significantly negative under the null model. The null of a common world steady state growth rate is rejected in favor of a modifications of the basic Solow model to allow for heterogeneous long run growth rates across countries. This alternative yields plausible estimates of the capital share and speed of convergence but shows that steady states for different countries are quite diverse in both levels and growth rates. An alternative framework is presented to relate long run growth rates to fundamentals.","PeriodicalId":172039,"journal":{"name":"Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth Research Paper Series","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2001-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128806261","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}